Hey Kelle!

I have my medical eval tomorrow morning with Dr. Appel. April said to plan on 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 hours. What all happens at this appointment? Hubby is going with me, I told him to bring a good book. Patti

I am not her, but I had surgery with his partner, Dr Steinberg. Anyhoo...that didn't take me 3.5-4 hours, but my pre-op testing the week before surgery took about that long. Are you getting your pre=op tests and bloodwork done-meet with anesthesiologist too? Basically for my Eval with steinberg, he pushed all around my abdomen to make sure everything was feeling good, answered my questions and went over the loads of papers that you have to sign saying you are aware of the risks and that you are not guarunteed to lose weight etc. Please come to our support group meeting on monday, june 28th at northlake hospital in Decatur on Montreal Rd right off of HWY 29... Do you know that Dr Appel/Steinberg have a Yahoo group? Hope all is well! Sherry

Hey Patti....girl, let me tell you, I hope you have more patience at your medical eval than I did. First of all they had us get there at 8:30am. We sat around until about 10:30 doing absolutely nothing. Then at 10:30 Dr. A started examaning people. I was the last to be examined at 11:30. Now I had thought that my meeting with him was going to be a one on one. So I had brought 4 pages of questions....wrong! There were three other women there. After the physical exams, they brought us all back out into the lobby and we did question and answer time. That was a crapshoot. The other ladies looked at my pile of questions and I could tell the were praying I wouldn't sit there and ask them one by one. I took pity on them and only asked the most important ones, but I was very disappointed in the whole process. First to make someone get there so early, only to sit around for 3 hours, then to lump us all together for question time....I just felt it was very unprofessional. Honestly Patti, I have to tell you this....I am really disappointed in Dr. Appel and his staff. I know he's a great surgeon with tons of experience and that's one of the only reasons why I've stayed with him...well that and the fact that at my BMI I had a very limited choice of surgeons in Atlanta. As far as the level of info I've received from them and the staff's overall attitude....I just think it's been crummy. For instance, my last preop meeting is on the 1st of July..well I know that Dr. A tests for H pylori, but no one had mentioned it to me. Now if they find that bacteria in your stomach, it's a 2 week course of antibiotics, so I thought I'd call and ask when they do it. Well April could not have neen ruder about the whole thing. She comes to the phone and the first words out of her mouth to me are, If you think you have H pylori, you need to go get tested today. I was like, wait a minute, I don't think I have it, but a lot of people do and I just want to know when you test for it. She said they test for it the day of your preop work. For me that's 5 days before my surgery. I asked what would happen if they found it at that time. She said my surgery would be cancelled (not postponed, cancelled****il such time as it had been treated. I was beside myself at that point and wanted to know why they don't test earlier, like in time to take the antibiotics if it's found (almost every other doctor does it that way), she made some lame excuse about insurance not paying for testing if you do it too far out and them wanting to have the most up to date tests on you going into surgery. She mumbled all this cause I think even she knew how lame that excuse was. Then she tops it off by saying, well I'm going to have to put this in your file that we've had this discussion. Like I'm at school and we're talking abouy my permanent behavior record! I was just like what the f**k ever lady. GRRRRR!!!! They drive me nuts...that's the attitude I've gotten from April all along. And Dr. A just seems to think of you as another number. I'll be glad to have this overwith. Hope your experience is better than mine. Oh, and I'm taking mastic gum to kill any H pylori I might have in my system. If my date gets pushed out cause they're not smart enough to test for it ahead of time, there might not be an office for anyone to go back to! Kelle

Girl, I am soo sorry about your experience. I hope mine goes better. I am still in shock about having to lose 50 more pounds. I will have to do the best that I can do. Just remember count backwards from 10 and try not to think about strangling the doctor. If it gets toooo bad, really let him have it, because getting pissed could cause H-pylori. My doc said to have an h-pylori test and a cardio done before August 12, I had the cardio done about a month ago and just need to do the blood work. It seemed easy enough. Good luck and will talk to you soon. Holly